Recent media coverage and spiraling public outrage over the water crisis in Flint, Michigan has completely eclipsed the ongoing environmental justice struggles of the Navajo. Even worse, the media continues to frame the situation in Flint as some sort of isolated incident. It is not. Rather, it is symptomatic of a much wider and deeper problem of environmental racism in the United States.
The history of uranium mining on Navajo (Diné) land is forever intertwined with the history of the military industrial complex. In 2002, the American Journal of Public Health ran an article entitled, “The History of Uranium Mining and the Navajo People.” Head investigators for the piece, Brugge and Gobel, framed the issue as a “tradeoff between national security and the environmental health of workers and communities.” The national history of mining for uranium ore originated in the late 1940’s when the United States decided that it was time to cut away its dependence on imported uranium. Over the next 40 years, some 4 million tons of uranium ore would be extracted from the Navajo’s territory, most of it fueling the Cold War nuclear arms race.
Situated by colonialist policies on the very margins of U.S. society, the Navajo didn’t have much choice but to seek work in the mines that started to appear following the discovery of uranium deposits on their territory. Over the years, more than 1300 uranium mines were established. When the Cold War came to an end, the mines were abandoned; but the Navajo’s struggle had just begun.
Back then, few Navajo spoke enough English to be informed about the inherent dangers of uranium exposure. The book Memories Come to Us in the Rain and the Wind: Oral Histories and Photographs of Navajo Uranium Miners and Their Families explains how the Navajo had no word for “radiation” and were cut off from more general public knowledge through language and educational barriers, and geography.
The Navajo began receiving federal health care during their confinement at Bosque Redondo in 1863. The Treaty of 1868 between the Navajos and the U.S. government was made in the good faith that the government – more specifically, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) – would take some responsibility in protecting the health of the Navajo nation. Instead, as noted in “White Man’s Medicine: The Navajo and Government Doctors, 1863-1955,” those pioneering the spirit of western medicine spent more time displacing traditional Navajo healers and knowledge banks, and much less time protecting Navajo public health. This obtuse, and ultimately short-sighted, attitude of disrespect towards Navajo healers began to shift in the late 1930’s; yet significant damage had already been done.
Founding director of the environmental cancer section of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Wilhelm C. Hueper, published a report in 1942 that tied radon gas exposure to higher incidence rates of lung cancer. He was careful to eliminate other occupational variables (like exposure to other toxins on the job) and potentially confounding, non-occupational variables (like smoking). After the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was made aware of his findings, Hueper was prohibited from speaking in public about his research; and he was reportedly even barred from traveling west of the Mississippi – lest he leak any information to at-risk populations like the Navajo.
In 1950, the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) began to study the relationship between the toxins from uranium mining and lung cancer; however, they failed to properly disseminate their findings to the Navajo population. They also failed to properly acquire informed consent from the Navajos involved in the studies, which would have required informing them of previously identified and/or suspected health risks associated with working in or living near the mines. In 1955, the federal responsibility and role in Navajo healthcare was transferred from the BIA to the USPHS.
In the 1960’s, as the incidence rates of lung cancer began to climb, Navajos began to organize. A group of Navajo widows gathered together to discuss the deaths of their miner husbands; this grew into a movement steeped in science and politics that eventually brought about the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) in 1999.
Cut to the present day. According to the US EPA, more than 500 of the existing 1300 abandoned uranium mines (AUM) on Navajo lands exhibit elevated levels of radiation.
Navajo abandoned uranium mines gamma radiation measurements and priority mines. US EPA
The Los Angeles Times gave us a sense of the risk in 1986. Thomas Payne, an environmental health officer from Indian Health Services, accompanied by a National Park Service ranger, took water samples from 48 sites in Navajo territory. The group of samples showed uranium levels in wells as high as 139 picocuries per liter. Levels In abandoned pits were far more dangerous, sometimes exceeding 4,000 picocuries. The EPA limit for safe drinking water is 20 picocuries per liter.
This unresolved plague of radiation is compounded by pollution from coal mines and a coal-fired power plant that manifests at an even more systemic level; the entire Navajo water supply is currently tainted with industry toxins.
Recent media coverage and spiraling public outrage over the water crisis in Flint, Michigan has completely eclipsed the ongoing environmental justice struggles of the Navajo. Even worse, the media continues to frame the situation in Flint as some sort of isolated incident.
Madeline Stano, attorney for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, assessed the situation for the San Diego Free Press, commenting, “Unfortunately, Flint’s water scandal is a symptom of a much larger disease. It’s far from an isolated incidence, in the history of Michigan itself and in the country writ large.”
While many environmental movements are fighting to establish proper regulation of pollutants at state, federal, and even international levels, these four cases are representative of a pervasive, environmental racism that stacks up against communities like the Navajo and prevents them from receiving equal protection under existing regulations and policies.
Despite the common thread among these cases, the wave of righteous indignation over the ongoing tragedy in Flint has yet to reach the Navajo Nation, the Mohawk community of Akwesasne, the Yakama Nation – or the many other Indigenous communities across the United States that continue to endure various toxic legacies in relative silence.
Current public outcry may be a harbinger, however, of an environmental justice movement ready to galvanize itself towards a higher calling, one that includes all peoples across the United States, and truly shares the ongoing, collective environmental victories with all communities of color.
If moose disappear from the boreal forest of northern Minnesota, as some biologists predict, they will not exit with a thunderous crash. Climate extinctions come quietly, even when they involve 1,000-pound herbivores.
Experts who have studied the Northwestern moose — Alces alces andersoni — believe they are witnessing one of the most precipitous nonhunting declines of a major species in the modern era, yet few outside Minnesota fully appreciate the loss.
The moose is an iconic species whose existence is woven into the social, economic and cultural fabric of this region. Its elongated head and wide antlers are emblazoned on everything from T-shirts to tire flaps. The 1960s cartoon character Bullwinkle J. Moose and his flying squirrel friend Rocky were residents of the fictionalized town of Frostbite Falls, Minn.
But the animals that inspired Bullwinkle are not what they were. Here, even healthy bulls — whose size, strength and rutting prowess make them the undisputed kings of the North Woods — are dying from what appear to be a combination of exhaustion, exposure, wasting disease triggered by parasites and other maladies.
The biologists are baffled and also helpless.
Mark Lenarz, who retired in March from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), where he led moose research efforts, said it’s not like the TV show “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”
“Unlike ‘CSI,’ it’s very hard to identify in the field exactly what an animal is dying from,” he said. “We know something about the symptoms” of distressed moose, he added, “but we don’t necessarily know the exact causes of mortality.”
What Lenarz and other experts do know is that a variety of climate stressors — including higher average annual temperatures, a long string of very mild winters, and increasingly favorable conditions for ticks, parasites and other invasive species — are conspiring to make northern Minnesota a moose graveyard.
Since 2002, Minnesota DNR specialists have put radio collars on 150 healthy adult moose; 119 subsequently died, most of them from unknown causes, according to wildlife officials. Car and train collisions accounted for 12 mortalities, while wolves were culpable in just 11 deaths.
Sudden collapse of herds
Meanwhile, annual surveys taken from helicopter overflights show that the state’s primary moose population, in the state’s northeastern Arrowhead region, has been halved in just six years, dropping from 8,840 animals in 2006 to just 4,230 this year. The decline mirrors a similar collapse a decade ago in the state’s northwest corner, where moose plummeted from an estimated 4,000 animals in the mid-1980s to less than 100 by the mid-2000s.
While some monitoring of moose had occurred in the 1990s, most of the animals were gone before scientists could examine cause-and-effect relationships. In the Arrowhead, however, experts are watching mass mortality, discovering multiple moose carcasses in the same area, including animals that appeared relatively healthy only a few years before.
It’s not just the occasional sickly moose succumbing to common causes of mortality, said Lenarz. “We’re out in the
field collecting dead radio-collared moose, and we were finding other moose that had died along with them.”
Similar mysterious deaths of one or more moose have been documented in Voyageurs National Park, where the National Park Service had launched its own radio-collar study of the animals, and in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, where moose sightings used to be routine for visitors but are increasingly rare.
Speaking at a media briefing to raise awareness on the importance of accountability when such maritime disasters occur, Anita Perera, Campaigner for Greenpeace South Asia, said that when a team visited Mannar on June 19, they noticed a significant number of plastic pellets even after one round of cleanup operations. “The Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) is responsible for cleaning up the oil spill, but so far, they haven’t communicated their response to expedite the cleaning of nurdles or the oil spill. This isn’t an isolated incident but a result of deeper structural failures in how we are governing our oceans and environmental safety. These are critical ecosystems, and there are people(and all of the other species) whose daily livelihoods would be affected as a result of such disasters. We need to hold these companies accountable for such incidents,” she underscored.
COLOMBO — Sri Lanka is once again facing a significant marine environmental crisis, as tiny plastic pellets, commonly known as nurdles, have begun washing ashore along the island’s northern coastline. This time, the pollution is linked to the sinking of the Liberia-flagged container ship MSC ELSA 3 off of Kerala, India. The unfolding incident has triggered fears of a repeat of the X-Press Pearl disaster in 2021, the worst maritime disaster to have occurred in Sri Lanka, significantly impacting marine ecosystems and coastal communities.
According to the Indian Coast Guard, the MSC ELSA 3, carrying 640 containers including hazardous cargo, sank on May 25, roughly 38 nautical miles off the Kerala coast. The cause was reportedly a failure of its ballast system. Indian authorities confirmed the vessel was loaded with an estimated 85 metric tons of diesel and 367 metric tons of furnace oil, in addition to at least 13 containers of dangerous substances such as calcium carbide. All 24 crew members were safely rescued by Indian Coast Guard and Navy teams.
While Indian authorities were able to initially contain an oil spill, the environmental fallout soon escalated. Plastic nurdles released from sunken containers began appearing on beaches in southern India, and by June 11, ocean currents driven by strong gusts of southwest monsoon winds carried them toward Sri Lanka’s northern shores, raising serious concerns among marine biologists and local communities.
Plastic nurdles washed ashore on Sri Lanka’s northern coast. Image courtesy of the Marine Environmental Protection Agency (MEPA).
Fresh environmental fallout
“We’ve begun cleaning efforts and are evaluating coordinated response actions,” said Padma Abeykoon, additional secretary at the Ministry of Environment. With strong monsoon winds forecast for the coming days, she noted that ocean currents may bring even more pollutants ashore.
According to Abeykoon, Indian authorities had alerted Sri Lanka about the possibility of debris from the sunken vessel drifting toward its shores, depending on ocean current patterns. The plastic pellets first arrived on the northern islands and reached the Mannar coast within a day, continuously washing up along Sri Lanka’s southern-facing beaches.
One of the earliest reports from Sri Lanka came from Lahiru Walpita, a birdwatcher in Mannar, who observed the nurdles during his routine early morning seabird monitoring. “On June 12, I noticed strange white pebbles scattered across the Mannar beach. A closer look revealed they were plastic nurdles, something I sadly recognize from the X-Press Pearl spill,” Walpita said.
Walpita initially assumed the rough seas had opened up a remnant of X-Press Pearl, but as he discovered 20 25-kilogram (55-pound) bags of nurdles strewn across a 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) stretch of beach in Mannar, he realized something was wrong. Out of these, only two bags were damaged, and others were in perfect shape, Walpita told Mongabay.
Walpita also observed crows and an egret investigating the pellets but hadn’t consumed them. “However, seabirds, like little terns and bridled terns, feed off the ocean surface while in flight and I fear they could mistake these pellets for food as they have little time to observe,” he warned. The breeding season for these species, especially on tiny islands nearby in Adam’s Bridge Marine National Park, runs from May to September, and Walpita fears the nurdle invasion could disrupt their reproductive cycles.
The process of cleaning nurdles along Sri Lanka’s northern coastal area commenced soon after the marine disaster but the strong monsoonal winds are expected to push more nurdles toward the Indian Ocean island’s beaches. Image courtesy of the Marine Environment Protection Agency (MEPA).
Temporary fishing ban
Meanwhile, Indian authorities imposed a temporary fishing ban within 20 nautical miles of the MSC ELSA 3 wreck to mitigate risks from hazardous cargo. One of the most concerning chemicals on board was calcium carbide, which reacts violently with water to release acetylene — a highly flammable and potentially explosive gas — and produces caustic substances harmful to marine life.
Adding to the urgency, Indian authorities are battling another maritime emergency just two weeks after the ELSA 3 incident. On June 7, the Singapore-flagged container ship MV Wan Hai 503 caught fire following multiple explosions, approximately 88 nautical miles off the coast of Kerala. The vessel, carrying more than 2,128 metric tons of fuel and numerous containers with hazardous materials, poses a potentially greater environmental risk than ELSA 3. As of June 18, Indian Coast Guard reports indicated that the fire was under control. The drifting vessel has since been secured and successfully towed away.
The Singapore-flagged MV Wan Hai 503, the second ship that caught fire off the south Indian coast of Kerala, occurred just 15 days after the sinking of the MSC ELSA 3. Image courtesy of the Indian Coast Guard via X.
Nurdle spill
The nurdles are highly persistent in the marine environment, as they can absorb toxic chemicals and enter the food chain, posing a risk to marine life and potentially humans as research on the aftermath of X-Press Pearl disaster proves.
The parallels of these disasters with the X-Press Pearl disaster are striking. The 2021 incident released billions of nurdles into the Indian Ocean, contaminating beaches for months, killing marine organisms and disrupting fishing livelihoods. One silver lining is that a lot of research was conducted following the X-Press Pearl disaster, and this can be informative in tackling the ongoing episode of the nurdle pollution, Gunasekara said.
Even today, Sri Lanka is fighting for adequate compensation, with legal proceedings dragging on in international courts. The echoes of that catastrophe now serve as a grim warning: Unless stronger regional protocols and maritime safety measures are enforced, the region could be doomed to repeat history.
Malaka Rodrigo is a naturalist with an IT background that took environmental journalism in 2007 to follow his belief ‘conservation through awareness’. He won many awards for his work and writes extensively on biodiversity, wildlife, oceans, water, climate change and environmental issues.
Banner image: The Liberia-flagged vessel MSC ELSA 3, carrying 640 containers including 13 with hazardous cargo, together with almost 85 metric tons of diesel and 367 metric tons of furnace oil sank on 25 May, off of Kerala in southern India. Image courtesy of the Indian Coast Guard.
More than 250 members of Indigenous and local communities gathered in Indonesia’s Merauke district to demand an end to government-backed projects of strategic national importance, or PSN, which they say have displaced them, fueled violence, and stripped them of their rights.
PSN projects, including food estates, plantations and industrial developments, have triggered land conflicts affecting 103,000 families and 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of land, with Indigenous communities reporting forced evictions, violence and deforestation, particularly in the Papua region.
In Merauke itself, the government plans to clear 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) for rice and sugarcane plantations, despite Indigenous protests; some community members, like Vincen Kwipalo, face threats and violence for refusing to sell their ancestral land, as clan divisions deepen.
Officials have offered no concrete solutions, with a senior government researcher warning that continued PSN expansion in Papua could escalate socioecological conflicts, further fueling resentment toward Jakarta and potentially leading to large-scale unrest.
Hundreds of protesters, including young and Indigenous peoples from three coastal villages, have demanded the closure of sand dredging in Indonesia’s West Sulawesi over environmental concerns and permit violations.
The protest earlier this month marked the latest in a series of demonstrations by residents of Karossa, Pasangkayu and Kalukku, who have voiced opposition to sand mining in Mamuju and Central Mamuju districts since November 2024. Tensions escalated after the West Sulawesi provincial investment office issued a mining business permit in March 2024 to PT Alam Sumber Rezeki (ASR), which plans to operate at the mouth of the Benggaulu River in Karossa.
The May 5 rally at the West Sulawesi governor’s office was sparked by a public statement from Governor Suhardi Duka, who dismissed the opposition as “thuggery” and insisted the mining permit had been issued in accordance with the law.
“That statement shows that our leaders still greatly lack a sense of solidarity with the people and the ability to understand what we are going through,” said Taufik Rama Wijaya, youth coordinator at the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) in West Sulawesi.
For nearly three hours of the protest, no government official came to address the crowd. It was reported that the governor and his team were on their way to Jakarta — some 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) to the west from his office. Frustrated, the protesters attempted to force their way into the governor’s office, sparking a clash with security forces. Several demonstrators were drenched by water cannons during the confrontation.
“So why is it so difficult for us to simply meet the governor and directly express our concerns?” said Zulkarnain, a coordinator of the Alliance of West Sulawesi People Against Mining.
PT Alam Sumber Rezeki holds a 69.9-hectare (173-acre) mining concession, according to Minerba One Map Indonesia (MoMI), an area that largely overlaps with community-owned land and fishponds. An investigation by the Alliance of West Sulawesi People Against Mining into the company’s feasibility study indicates that sand extracted from the river will be transported to North Penajam Paser district in East Kalimantan to support the construction of Indonesia’s new capital, Nusantara.
Many environmentalists have warned of the extensive footprint of environmental degradation brought on by the development of the city’s core and supporting infrastructure — not just in the interior of East Kalimantan, but across the island and beyond.
“The presence of sand and rock mining operations in several parts of West Sulawesi meant to supply materials for the new capital (IKN) or for sand exports poses a serious threat to communities living near the extraction sites,” the group said. “This is currently being experienced by residents in Mamuju and Central Mamuju.”
The protest in West Sulawesi is part of a long-running resistance. Residents had previously organized demonstrations at the village, subdistrict and regency levels and repeatedly participated in public hearings with the West Sulawesi provincial legislature and the mining company.
Yet, the government pushed ahead with the permit while public opposition was still mounting. The decision has not only intensified tensions between the community and the company but also led to criminalization of at least 21 residents (18 from Central Mamuju and three from West Kalukku) reported to the West Sulawesi police for rejecting the mining operation.
“Community involvement in issuing permits must not be merely a formality because they are the ones most affected by the mining,” AMAN’s Rama said.
Rama and his group demanded the closure of harmful mining operations in areas such as Karossa, Kalukku and Pasangkayu while also condemning the West Sulawesi governor’s remark equating anti-mining protests with thuggery and calling for a public apology. They also denounced police repression of peaceful demonstrators, urged the release of three detained protesters and called for an end to all environmentally destructive mining activities.
“The Indigenous youth and communities will not remain silent. We will continue to speak the truth and stand with the people,” Rama said.
Editor’s note: The International Day for Biodiversity was celebrated on May 22, which commemorates the adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity, a global treaty. What lessons have we learned from undoing past harms and conserving biodiversity for our planet’s future?
Global efforts to restore forests are gathering pace, driven by promises of combating climate change, conserving biodiversity and improving livelihoods. Yet a recent review published in Nature Reviews Biodiversity warns that the biodiversity gains from these initiatives are often overstated — and sometimes absent altogether.
Restoration has typically prioritized utilitarian goals such as timber production, carbon sequestration or erosion control. This bias is reflected in the widespread use of monoculture plantations or low-diversity agroforests. Nearly half the forest commitments in the Bonn Challenge to restore degraded and deforested landscapes consist of commercial plantations of exotic species, a trend that risks undermining biodiversity rather than enhancing it.
Scientific evidence shows that restoring biodiversity requires more than planting trees. Methods like natural regeneration — allowing forests to recover on their own — can often yield superior biodiversity outcomes, though they face social and economic barriers. By contrast, planting a few fast-growing species may sequester carbon quickly but offers little for threatened plants and animals.
Biodiversity recovery is influenced by many factors: the intensity of prior land use, the surrounding landscape and the species chosen for restoration. Recovery is slow, often measured in decades, and tends to lag for rare and specialist species. Alarmingly, most projects stop monitoring after just a few years, long before ecosystems stabilize.
Scientists underline that while proforestation, reforestation and forest rewilding can contribute to curbing climate change and biodiversity loss, they have their limits and must be combined with deep carbon emissions cuts and conservation of existing forests and wilderness.
Edward Faison, an ecologist at the Highstead Foundation, stood quietly in a patch of forest that stretched for miles in all directions. Above him, the needles from white pine trees swayed — common in the Adirondack Forest Preserve in northern New York state. He stepped past downed wood and big, broken snags, observing how the forest functioned with minimal interference.
“These forests have been essentially unmanaged for over 125 years. To see them continue to thrive and accumulate carbon, recover from natural disturbances and develop complexity without our help reveal just how resilient these systems are,” Faison says.
Protected from logging in 1894 by an act of the New York Legislature, the Adirondack Forest Preserve (AFP) is a model of natural forest growth, or letting forests simply “get on with it.” The largest trees, white pines (Pinus strobus), are more than a century old and stretch more than 150 feet tall and are 4-5 feet in diameter.
The AFP, the largest wilderness preserve in the eastern United States, is a prime example of what researchers have come to call “proforestation.” Coined in 2019 by Tufts University professor William Moomaw and Trinity College professor of applied science Susan Masino, the term proforestation describes the process of allowing existing forests to continue growing without human interference until they achieve their full ecological potential for carbon sequestration and biological diversity.
Proforestation is considered a natural climate solution, i.e., a strategy to steward the Earth’s vegetation to increase the removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. According to Faison, a forest naturally develops greater complexity over time, with a diversity of tree sizes and heights as well as large standing dead trees and downed logs. This complexity provides habitat for various animals, plants and fungi, which make the forest more resilient to disturbances associated with climate change.
Proforestation is distinct from reforestation, which can involve planting new trees in deforested areas to restore them (or allowing deforested areas to naturally regenerate). It is also different from afforestation, which is the process of planting new forests in previously unforested areas. Proforestation’s merit lies in inaction: simply leaving old forests undisturbed, allowing for continuous growth to maximize carbon accumulation over time. As forests mature and trees grow larger, they sequester greater amounts of carbon.
“The largest 1% diameter trees in a mature multiage forest hold half the carbon,” according to Moomaw. “It’s the existing forests that we have that are doing the work.” Existing forests remove almost 30% of CO2 from the atmosphere that humans put in every year from burning fossil fuels.
Older is better
In Mohawk Trail State Forest in Massachusetts, Moomaw studied the tallest grove of white pine trees in New England, aged between 150 and 200 years, observing how the trees grew. When comparing them with younger trees of the same type growing under similar conditions, he found that “the amount of carbon added by these trees between 100 and 150 years of age is greater than the amount added between zero and 50.”
In addition to carbon storage capabilities, old forests are pivotal in controlling regional and global water cycles through a process called evapotranspiration, by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere. Due to deeper and more complex root systems as well as larger canopies and leaves, old forests capture more water and release it as vapor into the atmosphere.
“Old forests have the genetic competence to do this work,” Masino says. “It’s not done by meadows. It’s not done by grassy areas. It’s not done as effectively by forests that have been cut or planted. It’s these ancient systems that have the complexity to bring water to themselves. And in doing that, they’re bringing it to the rest of the landscape. Once you start cutting the landscape, you’re drying it out.”
Masino, who also has a joint appointment in neuroscience and psychology at Trinity College, emphasizes the importance of designating natural areas appropriately and allowing more room for proforestation.
“It’s urgent to decide where we intend to prioritize natural processes, where we are doing research, and what areas we are dedicating for our resource needs,” she says. “Nature needs room to breathe. We can’t leave everything open to manipulation and extraction. It’s deadly.”
She says that planting trees on streets, on campuses or in parks is good for temperature regulation, flood protection and creating habitat, but these trees don’t grow up in a web of life. Planting trees in a forest, too, can risk disrupting the dynamic complexity of evolved and evolving genetic knowledge.
Wildlife dependent on old growth
Over on the West Coast, University of Oregon professor emeritus Beverly Law has studied forests for decades. She describes watching three logging trucks, each with a giant log from an old, single tree strapped to the back, passing in a procession while waiting at an intersection on her bike, a frequent occurrence on her way to work at the university in the late 1980s.
“There are plant and animal species that rely on these old forests for their survival. You take away the forest, and they’re gone,” Law says. “It’s important to have diverse genetics in the forest. Some of them will be more genetically able to withstand climate change than others. You don’t know which ones they will be. That is why genetic diversity within species is important.”
Mature forests are crucial to the survival of certain critically endangered animals that rely on the connected canopies or the soil-rich forest floor. Preserving the biodiversity of the Pacific Northwest, which hosts forests more than a thousand years old, is especially dire. According to a 2022 paper published in Environmental Chemistry Letters, old growth forests retain a number of species from both the top and bottom of the food chain, such as the Olympic salamander (Rhyacotriton olympicus), the Del Norte salamander (Plethodon elongatus) and the two species of tailed frog (Ascaphidae). Losing them forever could kick off a cascade effect and result in severe consequences for the environment.
The spotted owl (Strix occidentalis), too, depends on old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, requiring the specific environment for roosting and nesting, and remains a central figure in forest management debates.
Such hulking ancient trees are the eyes of the woods, having stood through changing years and the changing climate.
“Ten to 12% of old-growth forests are left [in the US], and it’s insane that people are still trying to cut them down,” Law says. “They are the only survivors of American handiwork. Is it man’s dominion over the forest? We should have reverence, considering they’re all that’s left.”
Banner image: Pine cone of a white pine (Pinus strobus). Image by Denis Lifanov via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
